United States Senators John Warner and Jim Webb have sent the Federal Communications Commission a letter asking the agency to give "every appropriate consideration" to a filing urging further relaxation of the FCC's ban on newspaper/broadcast station co-ownership.

The filing comes from the Media General corporation, which supports FCC Chair Kevin Martin's proposal to allow entities to own newspapers and broadcast stations in the same city, but opposes his plan to limit such cross-ownership to the top 20 United States markets.

"To do this based on some notion of market size, and then actually discriminating against small and mid-sized markets, should be policy anathema to the Commission," Media General wrote to the FCC on November 15th. "The Commission knows well that small and mid-sized markets are already the most at-risk for losing high quality local television news."

Media General owns newspapers and broadcast stations in many mid-sized regions in the southeast, including Virginia. These regions would not be affected by Martin's proposal, although language in his plan would allow the FCC to set aside the market definition "if the public interest, convenience, and necessity would be served."

Four days after Media General sent their protest to the FCC, Democrat Webb and Republican Warner added their supporting statement.

"In our view, the Federal Communications Commission should examine with close consideration the impact the cross-ownership ban has had not only on media companies operating in smaller markets over the last thirty years since its enactment, but more importantly any adverse impact it has had on the quantity and quality of local and community based news programming," they wrote to Martin on November 19th.

Media General has also sent a counter proposal to the FCC that would allow an entity to cross own a newspaper and broadcast station, as long as the TV signal provides "an average of five percent locally relevant and responsive programming" from five a.m. to midnight, among other conditions.